


The broken clock is a comfort (it helps me sleep tonight)

by Mellaithwen



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Book/Movie Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Character Death, Community: reel_startrek, M/M, Not set in space, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 04:04:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1414378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mellaithwen/pseuds/Mellaithwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>James T. Kirk first meets Leonard McCoy when he is six years old. </em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The broken clock is a comfort (it helps me sleep tonight)

**Author's Note:**

> The Time Traveler's Wife movie AU written for reel_startrek
> 
> the title's from 'Broken' by Lifehouse.
> 
> Originally posted on livejournal in September 2010

*

 

 

It’s the beginning of a breezy October in Chicago, when James T. Kirk finally drags himself down to the library to get the books he needs to finish his essays.

He thinks it might take him a while to get everything on his to-do list done. He thinks he might need to grab food on the way back. The milk’s running low and he hasn’t even had his caffeine fix yet.

He doesn’t think he’ll see Bones standing confused and looking younger than he’s ever been to Jim. He doesn’t think that today he will go to the library in search of four books, and come out with nothing but a grin on his face and a spring in his step.

He doesn’t think his world will change more so than it already has. He doesn’t think that everything that he’s been wondering about since he was six years old will suddenly be set in motion right here, right now.

But then, he likes a nice surprise every now and then. And he’s always thought Bones turning up in the middle of, well, anywhere, at any _time_ , was a nice surprise.

 

*

 

 

Time-travel, to most, is considered impossible.

To others it is wished for, dreamed of.

For Leonard McCoy it is a curse that leads him to drink. And drink. And drink some more.

His father had a similar reaction, and now both are estranged. Years of pain and suffering and confusion at the hand’s of Leonard’s “condition” has left their once strong bond tainted with bitterness.

“We both like the same whisky, but that’s where the similarities end.” Leonard will tell Jim three weeks into their relationship when the latter asks about family. McCoy will grimace, before giving in to those deep blue orbs.

Months later, Jim will insist that father and son should rebuild their broken bond.

Years later, McCoy will finally agree.

He’ll badger his father to open the door, they’ll fight, loud and angry and long overdue. Eventually, when the shouting has quietened down, Leonard will tell his father about Jim. And finally, when the coffee is cold, he’ll tell his father about his most recent journey to the past; wherein his mother was on a train, alive and smiling and on her way home to her loving husband and adoring child.

But he hasn’t met Jim yet, and he still drinks a lot, so he travels more, which makes him want to drink more, and drink he does...and _the world spins madly on_.

 

 

*

 

 

 

Jim studies engineering because he can’t bear to run off to the Air Force and leave his mother heartbroken. He wants to fly like his dad but just when he thinks he needs to escape, Bones appears. He’s always there. In the meadow, in the street. Once on a beach in the middle of February when Jim had run away at fourteen while he and his mother were visiting his grandparents.

Bones is always there, and knowing that gives him more relief than he thinks flying ever could.

So he works hard, gets good grades, gets into University and waits. And one day when he’s not even thinking about it, when he’s searching for a ridiculous amount of out-of-print texts (because professors like to make things difficult) there he is.

Introduced as _McCoy, just McCoy_ , he appears from behind the bookshelves with a grimace that tells Jim he’d rather not be out in the open at all. There’s a rather thick layer of stubble on his chin and his hair is unkempt. There’s the slightest whiff of alcohol on him that Jim only really notices because it’s so damn out of place.

“Can I help you?” He asks, in a southern drawl; a hint of a growl just there in the background.

Jim can’t think. Can’t speak. Can only stare. He doesn’t realise he’s been holding his breath until he tries to speak and feels his lungs expand all of a sudden at the strain of _talking_.

“It’s you. You’re here.” He smiles after what seems like an age of silence, wherein the helpful receptionist has long since left. They are alone, as—Jim thinks—it should be.

“That I am.” McCoy replies dryly, his eyebrow cocked in what Jim thinks might be mild annoyance and a hint of curiosity. This Bones seems so new to him, and yet...

“I...I mean, you always said you’d see me again but you, you never said here. Now. Today.”

Understanding dawns and McCoy takes hold of Jim’s arm suddenly, pulling him into the darkness of the bookshelves.

“We’ve met...before?”

“Oh yeah. Lots of times. Your hair’s longer and that’s kinda weird, but it’s definitely you.”

“Hey—”

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I’m just so used to something else you know? You appear, I give you clothes, we hang, but you’re always so much older.”

“Look...”

“I can explain. Properly. I mean.” Jim breathes. “Come to dinner. I’ll...we can talk. And discuss. And I’ll explain in more detail or something.” Jim says all at once, surprising himself somewhat.

“Dinner?”

“We’ve been planning it for a long time.” He smirks, rattling off information about a diner nearby. He notices that he’s late for a lecture and races off, heart beating hard in his chest because while McCoy might not have realised, Jim certainly understood that he had just asked the love of his life on a date for the first time.

And to James T. Kirk, that was suddenly a very big deal.

 

 

*

  

 

McCoy has been here before, he’s been here a few times, more than a few times,

It’s Christmas, and soon his mother will drive past him after he has broken into the back of someone’s car and stolen their gym clothes.

E _s ist ein’ Ros’ entsprungen, aus einer Wurzel zart..._ His mother’s operatic voice is on the wind. Her melodies caught between the ice crystals of the snowflakes that fall down to the ground in their soft arches. ... _Wie uns die Alten sungen, von Jesse war die Art._

She sings and he feels safe, but he could never carry a tune. After that night he never bothered to try again. Not for...

His memories of this night are disjointed. A combination of what he saw as a terrified child in the backseat, and from each and every angle as he has grown older. He finds himself humming the German carol as the flames dance and climb higher and higher. He clutches the blanket in his hands and races towards the shivering child in the middle of the road.

He remembers all of this, he remembers the car skidding, the headlights shining from a dozen other times where he’s tried and failed to stop it all from going wrong—he realises then that he is the man from that night. The kind stranger who told him to be careful, to not be afraid.

He says everything just as he remembers it.

_There’s nothing you can do, listen to me, Leonard, hey look at me, listen, you were in the back of the car and it was spinning and all of a sudden you were back home, two weeks ago, watching your mom and dad read to you…You travelled back in time, Leonard. Just like I did to come see you…_

He drapes the blanket over his younger self.

“I’m you, Leonard, when you’re all grown up. And everything’s gonna be okay, I promise.”

And he’s back in his apartment, half an hour late for dinner and shivering from the lingering effects of thirty-year old snow.

 

 

*

 

 

 

“Uh...hi.” is all McCoy can manage as he slinks into the booth in the diner to find a smiling Jim sitting across from him. The man from the library who appears to not only know him, but find his hair strangely long.

“Sorry I’m late.”

“That’s okay, I’m used to waiting.”

McCoy frowns, but before he can comment the waitress asks what they’d like to drink and while Jim orders water, McCoy orders bourbon.

“You shouldn’t drink.” Jim says and McCoy stares at him as though he’s insane.

“Excuse me?”

“You told me that Dr. Puri told you not to drink,” his voice lowers then, “It makes you travel.”

When the waitress arrives with their drinks, McCoy takes a moment to eye up the brown liquid he’d more than like to down right about now before launching into his questions.

“Tell me.” He says in a no-nonsense tone that he nearly regrets when Jim frowns.

“Excuse me?”

“Everything. Tell me everything. I mean, you...You do realise why I don’t know you, right? And Dr. Puri? I’ve never even heard of him. Who is he? Who are you?” He says hurriedly, mumbling, half hoping that his words won’t be heard and should this stranger not know his secret, he can explain it away in a cough or stutter or something.

Jim nods and McCoy feels his heart beat faster and faster. There’s an eager tint to Jim’s ridiculously blue eyes, a love hidden there that McCoy isn’t used to seeing directed at him. Especially from complete strangers who know a great deal about him and who he’s only ever met once.

“Dr. Puri is your Doctor. He’s a geneticist. He’s been researching into your condition, the gene that makes you travel. You never told me more than that. But he helps you, in the future, I guess.”

“And you?”

“I’m...well, I’ve known you my entire life. You’re my best friend.” He pauses as he rifles through his bag before bringing out a bundle and continuing. “I wrote down every time that you came to visit me.” Jim says holding the tattered notebook in his hands. “You told me that you go back to the same places a lot.”

“Yeah,” McCoy nods, half amazed to hear someone else talk about himself, about things he’s never told anyone, not yet. “It’s like gravity, big events pull you in.”

Jim can’t help but smile, it’s something pretty new to him, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t like this...this random happiness he feels at the sight of his best friend looking so much younger than he’s ever seen before.

“I was a big event.”

Yeah. He likes this.

 

 

*

 

 

 

Jim first meets Leonard McCoy when he is six years old.

He is playing in the meadow behind his mother’s family home. His father, George—an esteemed pilot—has been dead for two years, and they have lived here ever since.

When Jim runs around the house in his red cape, he tells anyone who will listen that he wants to fly just like his daddy, just like superman. He only stops when he sees his mother start to cry, and so he heads off into the meadow to fly around Metropolis in peace.

Jetting around in a circle, he hears rustling in the bushes and a head pops up from behind the leaves.

“Can I borrow your cape?” The head asks kindly.

“Why?”

“I’ve lost my clothes, I’ll give it back to you, I promise.”

Jim thinks for a moment before handing the large red blanket over to the man, who then emerges, covered in Jim’s makeshift cape.

“Who are you?”

“My name’s McCoy, I’m from the future. We’re friends there, when you’re all grown up.”

“Prove it.”

“Your name is James Tiberius Kirk, you’re six years old and right now your mom is making lunch up at the house for when your Uncle Pike comes to visit.”

“That’s just knowing stuff...” A beat, and then; “do people live on the moon where you’re from?”

“Uh….no, they don’t, kid.’

The boy pouts at this, seemingly unimpressed with this far off visitor.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” He smiles somewhat knowingly and Jim shakes his head. “Well if you stick around long enough, you’ll see me disappear.”

As his new best friend vanishes in front of his eyes, young James Kirk adds Time Travel to his already quite imaginative list of interests (for a six year old). His mother smiles as he bounds into the kitchen and starts to tell her all about his new friend Leonard from the future.

Weeks later, when Winona notices things going missing from George’s half of the wardrobe she sighs sadly and thinks it’s a result of Jim trying to be closer to his late father. Searching the garments for a comfort long gone but a smell that lingers still.

 _She does it too_.

 

 

*

  

 

“Where...where did we meet for the first time?”

“In the meadow,” Jim grins as Bones’ eyebrow quirks in what he presumes is amusement. “Behind my house, when I was six.”

“You’ve known me since you were six years old?”

“I was pretending to be Superman and there you were asking for my cape.”

“You had a cape?” Bones can’t help but smile. He’s talking to a complete stranger who knows his great big secret, and he’s smiling at the thought of a little boy being the Man of Steel.

“I stole my mom’s picnic blanket and uh you were kinda...well, you know.”

McCoy clears his throat.

“When I travel, I can’t take anything with me, just my bones.”

“You say that a lot. I even started calling you Bones as a nickname. You said Leonard reminded you of other people and that—”

“What?”

“That I would call you Bones when I’m older too.”

“I guess it’s a done deal then. Did you...I mean, no clothes, no food...?” McCoy leaves the question vague and open-ended, feeling almost rude to ask outright if six-year-old Jim had helped him out at all.

“Food was pretty easy. My mom used to think you were my imaginary friend and that I ate for the both of us and clothes, well, I left some of my dad’s clothes in the woods for you.”

“He didn’t mind?”

The seemingly permanent shine in Jim’s eyes dims, and his gaze darts down to the journal in his hands.

“He died when I was little.” He whispers, fingers unconsciously curling around the corners of the book and Bones—nickname now firmly stuck—decides to change tactics.

“Well, you seem to know a lot about me. What about you? What do you want to do?”

Jim smiles, he hasn’t told this version of his best friend yet, and that’s confusing...sort of. Though more so for the unknowing Bones.

“Fly, Bones, I’ve always wanted to fly.”

A shudder runs through the older man’s shoulders, the same from Jim’s childhood. Every version of this time traveller hates flying just as much as he hates any kind of travelling he has no control over. Jim laughs.

“So you still hate flying.”

“Do you have any idea how dangerous those things are?”

“Yes. Actually I do. But I also know there’s nothing I want more than to be sitting in that pilot seat. Well, that, and you.”

He worries he might have just been too forward, but there’s only curiosity in Bones’s eyes, and it’s that curiosity and attraction that leads them both to his apartment that night in a flurry of hurried kisses and searching hands in the corridor while McCoy hurriedly tries to find his keys.

 

 

*

 

 

 

“You have to count to a thousand.”

“What?”

“Just do it.”

He does.

1, 2, 3, 4, Bones runs around shoving crap into corners, and clothes behind the sofa, 10, 11, 12, when he needn’t really bother; Jim’s only got eyes for him. 24, 25, 26.

He straightens out the bed, and does the same haphazard cleaning in that room too. Jim cracks open an eyelid and watches as most of this goes on.

“A thousand!” He announces, before he’s even reached one hundred.

The kiss is sudden, one moment they’re staring and the next their lips are locked together. Bones returns it with the same fervour as Kirk’s initial advance. There’s something about Jim, a safety of sharing his secret, an understanding he doesn’t even comprehend yet. And then there’s the attraction and the way Jim manages to undress him with his eyes. Those blue, blue eyes that want him so badly.

They fall back onto the couch, hands roaming as they remove one another shirts and all of a sudden Bones feels compelled to mark Jim’s skin in the crook of his neck.

“Does that mean I’m yours?” Jim grins; losing himself in everything that is Bones.

“Definitely.” Bones breathes, completely unsure of what the hell he’s getting himself into, and really not caring—content to bask in this release, in this moment, in _Jim_.

 

 

*

 

 

When Kirk wakes up, he blinks a few hundred times before he remembers exactly where he is and who is lying next to him still fast asleep.

He stops smiling when he finds the lipstick in the medicine cabinet that looks old but not old enough to ease his jealousy. It hurts that someone had his Bones first when technically Jim called dibs a long, long time ago.

But the lipstick _is_ old, and Bones tells him as much as he bids him back to bed. Jim trusts him, because, well, it’s _Bones._

 

 

*

 

 

They’re running along the lakefront away from the observatory when Jim says, gasping for breath, that he’d like Bones to meet his roommates.

“They’re well meaning nosy people who won’t stop hassling me, so I’d appreciate it if you came to dinner. But don’t worry I’m not the one cooking.”

Nowhere in that sentence does Bones remember a warning about Spock. He’s met some protective friends before but this is something else.

Spock is stoic, and his gaze seems to look straight through him. Bones resists the urge to mutter under his breath because something tells him this guy? This close friend of Jim’s? might just hear every word.

He doesn’t relax all evening, and it takes several meetings for Bones to realise that that stiff posture and blank face is relaxed. Nyota’s a lot easier to talk to, she’s friendly and open and while she won’t take any crap from Jim, her hits to his shoulder are playful at best. She is Spock’s polar opposite and yet, together, anyone can see they make perfect sense. They fit.

Bones looks down to find Jim’s fingers interlaced with his own underneath the table.

He smiles.

He likes this. The calm, friendly atmosphere.

He doesn’t travel for an entire week and that both thrills and terrifies him.

 

 

*

 

 

McCoy waits for Jim after class when he knows they’ll have the afternoon together. Jim studies, and Bones works, and at night they fall into each other’s arms like there’s nowhere else they’d rather be.

There _is_ nowhere else they’d rather be.

Until Bones’ body disagrees and suddenly decides to send him to the past, or the future or anywhere in-between.

He’s making dinner in the kitchen when Jim spins around at the sound of broken dishes and pans flying. He hears footsteps from the living room and curses as he shoves Bones’s clothes and shoes into a cupboard.

“What happened?” Nyota asks, rushing forward to help Jim pick up the remains of dinner off of the floor.

“Where’s McCoy?”

“He had to go lie down for a bit, I hope I didn’t just wake him up...” Jim trails off and Spock’s raised eyebrow sees straight through the lie. He helps Jim with the broken china while Nyota bins the ruined food. They order pizza, and Jim spends the entire night keeping them away from his bedroom, until finally McCoy appears in the doorway and Jim excuses himself for bed.

“Are those my pants?”

“Well I couldn’t find mine.” Bones growls, as Jim takes him on a detour to the kitchen, retrieves the hidden garments, and laughs.

“I’m glad you find it funny, these aren’t big enough for a child.”

“Hey! We can’t all be broad-shouldered and freakishly built like—what happened?” Jim’s tone goes from joking to serious in the time it takes Bones to remove Jim’s old tee. There’s bruising starting to form on Bones’ back and he moves before Jim can reach out and touch it.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t be an asshole, what happened?”

“What do you think happened, Jim? A naked guy turns up in an alleyway in the middle of the night.” Bones growls harshly, and Jim swallows the lump in his throat and gets under the sheets of the bed.

The other side of their life, the danger, the fear, suddenly rears it’s ugly head and Jim can’t think of anything else.

“Stop looking at me like that, kid. I’m fine. Let’s just go to sleep, okay?”

Jim nods, and while they both might close their eyes, neither sleeps a wink.

It’s not always like that.

Bones has gotten used to the flying punches, and he’s usually a lot better at ducking and dishing out his own, but his mind was still on dinner that night and he wasn’t prepared...

 

 

*

 

 

The next time he travels, it’s cold, and he works fast to find clothes in the back of someone else’s car. There’s something familiar about all of this and he makes it to the road in time to watch as his mother drives past. He sees himself in the back seat and he knows exactly what’s about to happen next.

He’s back again. Back to this moment, the beginning of it all.

He reaches out; a million thoughts racing through his head and yet the one telling him to move, to run, to fix it, fix it now, has been silenced by years of failed attempts.

He remembers jingle bells and a stinging sensation on his cheek, trickling blood and lights and snow and so much fear and suddenly it’s two weeks ago and he’s warm in his house, and there is his mother and there is his father and there, strangely enough, is himself...and it’s like déjà vu from a whole other perspective and he’s analysed it a million times since.

And then he’s back on that snow slicked road, and his mother’s car is on fire and while he feels everything around him lose meaning a man appears from nowhere with a blanket and a sad smile. He holds him, he tells him that it’ll be okay, and that he time travelled to two weeks ago and to not be afraid because it would happen again.

And that his name was Leonard, and he was _him._

 

 

*

 

 

And then there’s that time with the homophobe in the alley, and the pink frilly blouse that turns into a reason to pummel some guy into the ground.

And then Spock’s there asking what the hell is going on, and they’re breaking into the Army-Navy Surplus store. He tells him the truth, and Spock says he’s crazy—the disbelieving man is halfway through a long list of esteemed psychologists when Bones disappears without warning.

In a blink he’s in the library, where he works, in the stacks between aisles of books hidden in shadow in the furthest point of the building. His clothes are in the same pile his impromptu departure left them in and he quickly dresses before heading back to the student waiting for his requested periodicals to be found.

“Took you long enough.”

“You have no idea.”

 

 

*

 

 

“When were you going to tell me about McCoy’s condition?” Spock says having strolled into the apartment they’ve been sharing since college with an air of what Kirk thinks is anger.

Jim freezes; that’s more than a little out of the blue, not to mention terribly un-specific. Maybe Bones said something, but there’s no guarantee it was about the—

“And by condition, I mean his innate ability to travel through time.”

“He, uh, he told you?”

“Yes, and I told him he was clearly troubled and should seek professional help as my degree in Physics proves how illogical his statement is.”

“And then he vanished?”

“Indeed.”

Jim smiles a little at that.

“This amuses you? I saw him fighting in an alleyway wearing, well, not much. And then he time travelled? Not to mention the amount of breaking and entering offences he committed—”

“You don’t have to be concerned, Spock. It’s okay.”

“Jim, perhaps—”

“And even if I wanted to change it, I couldn’t, but I don’t, so it’s all good. Relax. Be happy for me, because I am _really_ happy. It’s just a little complicated.”

“I could cite a hundred different reasons why this wouldn’t be a good idea, but I know you will simply ignore it.”

“Ah, you know me well!” Jim replies to the back of Spock’s head as he does his best impression of a child and stalks off.

When he arrives home and tells Nyota she wonders if he’s finally begun to make jokes at the expense of others, but his eyes are deathly serious, and eventually, even she witnesses it at first hand.

People _know_ , and for once, it doesn’t scare the shit out of Jim. If anything, he feels the weight on top of his shoulders lessen just a little and he wonders if Bones feels the same way.

 

 

*

 

 

McCoy blends in well, he looks a little rough around the edges, and the clothes on his back don’t fit properly—mainly because they’re never his own when he jumps like this—but he knows how to make himself invisible.

Don’t make eye contact, just walk. Don’t talk, just walk, keep walking, keep looking ahead. You have a destination just like everyone else. It’s just a little farther, that’s all. Keep walking, keep going and in a second you’re gone and they’ll never remember you. Lost in the crowds, in the wave, in the light, in the dark, down an alleyway, through a door.

Same ol’ same ol’.

Until Jim.

Jim notices every time you leave.

_You never should have let someone in...but...but…_

Even when they argue, Bones can’t deny the feeling inside. He’s in love, pure and simple and it’s hard but goddamn, Jim smiles and it’s okay for that second in time.

 

 

*

 

 

His father tells him he’s been ill, but the real reason he’s pale and gaunt is that he’s been nearly constantly drunk for a long time. He hasn’t played in the orchestra for months, and his apartment is a mess. His beard is unkempt, and he smells of whisky and unwashed clothes. He pours himself a drink while McCoy tries to clean a path from the bedroom to the kitchen.

“That’s not gonna help.” He says, tossing rubbish into the bin.

“Sure it will. Want one?”

“No, I quit.”

“Pity. It was our one shared enthusiasm.”

This is where the fighting begins. McCoy tries to tidy up his father’s desk, but he’s met with rebuttal after rebuttal and _get your own life in order before you start telling me how to live mine._ Their arguments always end the same. His condition ruins their lives, and his father doesn’t understand why his wonderful wife can’t be stopped from getting in that damned car. McCoy ends up telling his father that not only is his life coming together, but he’s in love, and he’s getting married, and he’s happy for once in his damned life.

And all his father can do is sigh.

“I miss her, I miss her everyday.”

“So do I.”

 

 

*

 

 

He gathers up the courage to whisper _will you marry me_? between the sheets finally on a Sunday morning in Autumn. Jim jokingly replies _No_ , if only to have the certainty in Bones’ smile falter for a second.

“Wha—”

“I didn’t mean that, I didn’t, I just wanted to hear what it would sound like...if I didn’t, you know?”

“No?”

“I made it my choice. And I choose you, I do. I do. _Of course_. Yes, yes, yes.”

 

 

*

 

 

 

They go out for drinks to celebrate. Nyota smiles and hugs the both of them, beaming and Spock congratulates them, but his gaze seems perpetually hardened. Jim’s invited a Russian whiz-kid from his lectures and in turn Bones asks Scotty from work to make an appearance and Christine manages to make it too.

They toast to the future and Bones feels a shiver run down his spine.

“To us.” He says instead, staring at Jim.

“To Russia!” Chekov chimes in, somehow already quite drunk.

“To Scotland!” Scotty responds, not one to be put out when it comes to patriotism.

“To the happy couple.” Nyota finishes, re-iterating the celebratory element of the night, as they all finish toasting and take sips of their drinks.

 

 

*

 

 

The afternoon before the big day Bones gets his haircut to a style Jim is more accustomed to, and when he arrives back at the Kirk family home where the wedding is being held, he sees his father in the foyer waiting for him, smiling and sober. Everything’s coming together but before he can manage to take a valium to calm his nerves he freaks himself out and disappears in a flash.

Spock does not freak out. He paces, and he frowns hard enough for a small vein in his forehead to pop out uncharacteristically, but he does not freak out.

“Shit.”

Thankfully, McCoy appears a minute or so later. He’s a lot more grey around the edges, but if any of the guests notice they don’t comment on it. Jim does. Several times. Even more so, when his own Bones, from the present finally turns up, smiling.

_I can’t believe you missed our wedding._

_I’ll catch it on the flip side._

_Jerk._

_Shut up and dance with me._

 

 

*

 

 

In the meadow, he meets young Jim for the first time.

“Finally.” The young boy mutters and McCoy deduces that this is far from their first meeting. Jim lays out a picnic of two turkey sandwiches and cold black coffee that could probably fuel a car for fifty miles.

“Uncle Pike says coffee is a grown up’s drink, so I figured you’d like it.”

McCoy smiles, and feigns drinking with aplomb.

“Are you married?” Jim asks, among many other questions.

“Yes.”

“Is your wife a time traveller?”

“No.” Bones laughs.

Then.

“Sam says he wants to run away again, forever.”

“He won’t.”

“You’ve never told me anything like that before. From the future, I mean.”

“Well there’s no use in you worrying if you don’t have to, kid.”

He ruffles the boy’s hair and takes a bite out of the sandwich as Jim tells him about his day at school, and McCoy offers to help him with his homework.

When he makes it back to the honeymoon suite Cary Grant and Grace Kelly are dancing around each other on the television. Fireworks burst in the sky outside, as Kelly plays coy and Grant plays aloof. _Oh, what would you do?_ She asks him, stepping back into the darkness of the hardly lit room. _The thrill is right there in front of you, but you can't quite get it - and the gems glistening on the other side of the window, and someone asleep, breathing heavily_.

He switches off the television set and crawls into bed.

“I was in the meadow.” He tells Jim in between kisses, his coarse fingers lingering over soft skin in the darkness.

“You were?”

“Mhmm, I was.”

 

 

*

 

 

They’re happy, for the most part. Lonely dinners and smashed plates seem to fill the cracks of their relationship like unevenly placed polyfiller, but it is what it is.

At first Jim accepts the disappearing acts like he always used to but for some reason he thought the rings on their fingers would have changed something. Maybe given him more of a reason to stay.

No, that’s not fair, Bones can’t help it. He berates himself.

But they’ve moved into Bones’s apartment and Jim finds himself counting to a thousand as though he’ll feel less alone as he packs up the Christmas gifts he opened on his own over a week ago.

And one day while he’s getting ready for work, Jim hears a thump, and moments later Bones appears in the doorway to their bedroom, dressing as he smiles at the familiar face of his husband.

“Did I miss Christmas?”

Jim blinks. And he can’t swallow the anger; he can’t just let it go. Bones is grinning and he hasn’t got a clue.

“And New Years.”

To his credit, Bones looks apologetic but Jim has waited for two weeks and he won’t be late for work again, so he leaves his husband standing in the middle of the apartment instead.

When he leaves the hanger bay hours later Bones is standing there waiting. He’s shifting from one foot to the other and staring at the planes all around them with great disdain.

“They’re pretty safe, you know.”

“Don’t pander to me, kid.” Bones rants, muttering worst-case scenarios under his breath.

“Is that your way of apologising?”

“Yes.”

 

 

*

 

 

When they decide to search for Dr. Puri, to lay the groundwork of what they hope will help the two of them, they’re met with a geneticist who is more than a little sceptical. At first he thinks McCoy is crazy. And then he thinks Jim is crazy, and Nyota, and Spock and whoever else decides to vouch for this time travel acid trip they all appear to be on.

Bones tries to make himself disappear but he’s never had that much control and of course the one time he’d want to, he can’t.

He explains again and again. _A genetic anomaly, chrono-impairment, it’s a term you come up with._ Finally, to be rid of what he believes is a mad-man’s ranting, Dr. Puri agrees to do the tests, and when McCoy disappears out of the MRI machine, all the good doctor can say is _“Oh shit._ ”

 

 

*

 

 

While Bones spends his time talking to Dr. Puri, and travelling from one place to the next, Jim starts taking pilot lessons in his free time. It becomes a release he didn’t know he needed, all of the stress of being left behind falls away and it’s just him and gravity. The rumble of the aircraft soaring through the clouds. It’s everything he’s been longing for since he was a little kid with a cape.

Bones does not take kindly to this information when he finds out but Jim can’t bare to compromise.

“What’s wrong with me wanting one normal thing in my life? I control the plane. I tell it where to go, when to land—”

“Do you tell it when to crash too? Damn it, Jim, it’s dangerous, why can’t you see that?”

“Life’s dangerous, Bones! When I was six years old a strange naked man wandered into the meadow behind my house! You time travel—you vanish into thin air, and you’re lecturing me on the dangers of life?”

“I can’t control whatever the hell is wrong with me, Jim, but no one’s forcing you into those planes.”

“It’s in my blood, Bones. It’s something I have to do, okay?”

Both of them are too busy arguing to notice the young girl they pass, who only stops and stares at them in a shop doorway, smiling.

 

 

*

 

 

The first time Jim is kissed by Bones, he’s eighteen years old. It’s raining in the meadow, and he’d been running around in it for nearly half an hour when out of the bushes, McCoy appears.

He’s angry; he’s just disappeared mid-argument and he’s jabbing the old jumper over his head in haste. He stops when he sees Jim, but the young man just grins and runs forward to greet his best friend.

Bones feels the anger melt away and Jim’s so close and he’s smiling so much and before Bones can even think of the repercussions, he’s taking the man’s face in his hands and kissing him hard.

Jim jerks himself backwards.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m...I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Jim, Christ, wait, wait a minute, how old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“Oh jesus, I’m sorry, kid. I am, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”

“You’re married!”

“I know, Jim—”

“What?”

And he’s gone.

 

 

*

 

 

Bones looks around and he’s back where he started—time wise at least. He recognizes the suburb too and he just about manages to get himself to his father’s house without being seen—though the homeless man on the corner didn’t seem to care...

He’s buttoning up one of his father’s shirts when the man himself appears in the doorway, slightly out of breath.

“Son...”

“Dad? What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

“It’s Jim.”

They’re out the door and headed for the hospital in seconds.

  

*

 

The first time Leonard McCoy finds himself kissing Jim Kirk, they’re in his old apartment. He’s only known the man a day, but Jim tells him they’ve known each other for a hellova lot longer than that. Longer than Bones can even remember, longer than Bones can even know.

He meets Jim for the hundredth time when really it’s the first, and he meets him for the first time, when really it’s the hundredth. Their life is more than a little complicated, all twists and turns, (‘swings and roundabouts’ Jim used to joke) but it’s perfect in all its dysfunctional ways, and Bones’ll be damned if anything thinks it can ruin something so _many_ years in the making.

  

*

 

There’d been an explosion in the hanger bay and Jim was too close to the blast. Thrown into the air, he lands in a heap on the ground. There’s a horrific piece of shrapnel in his side and it’s the last thing he sees, fingers coming away bloody, before he falls back unconscious.

By the time Bones is back in his own time and rushing to the hospital, Jim is already hours in to his emergency surgery.

There’s nothing Bones can do, when he was younger all he ever wanted to do was be a doctor, save strangers to make up for letting his mother die time after time. His father told him how unrealistic it was once the extent of his son’s condition was made clear to him. He would never be able to go through medical school or a residency, the stress alone of being responsible for so much would probably have him travelling faster and faster.

The library job was good. It meant he could hide away in the periodicals for hours and hours and no one would think anything of it. Disappearing at lengths at a time meant the book was a little harder to find. No one died because of it.

Here? All he can do is pace.

He doesn’t stop when Nyota begs him to sit, or when Spock implores him to do so. His father calls his name; tries to reason with his son in the gruff tone the boy should be used to.

He stops when two nurses and another doctor run past him. He stops when a door opens and all he can see is white coats stained red.

He stops.

 

  

*

 

 

“I wasn’t even _flying._ ”

“I know, I know.”

 

  

*

 

 

A little girl stands at the end of the corridor, she smiles at Bones while the Doctors check on Jim in private. She smiles even though Bones probably looks like he’s about to kill someone, teeth bared and barely holding it together.

She smiles and vanishes into thin air.

 

  

*

 

 

Their arguments fade into the netherworld that is life before the accident, and when Bones’ father drives him to the hospital to pick up Jim, he’s holding a lottery ticket in his hands that will most certainly be a winner. Jim doesn’t go back to work, neither does Bones, and they spend hours searching for the right house, the one Bones will recognise until finally it’s there, and they take it and it’s perfect.

Two and a half weeks later they’re toasting to new life and happy beginnings when they hear a noise in the foyer.

Bones is bleeding on the ground, gasping, naked, before he vanishes again into thin air. Spock, Uhura, Bones and Jim stand slack jawed in the same place for at least an hour.

 

  

*

 

 

“I’ve never seen you older than forty. But maybe that’s because Dr. Puri finds a cure.”

“He’s not going to find a cure, Jim.”

 

  

*

 

 

“Is this Mr. Leonard McCoy?”

“Uh yeah, this is he.”

“Sir, I’m calling from Northwestern Memorial Hospital, I’m afraid I have some bad news. You are aan acquaintance of Jocelyn Darnell, yes?”

“Uh, yeah, we used to date a long time ago, what’s this about?”

“I’m sorry to tell you this over the phone but Ms. Darnell was in a car accident last night, her injuries were very severe and I’m afraid she died nearly an hour ago.”

“Oh god.”

“Sir, there is another pressing matter. With Ms. Darnell gone, custody of your daughter falls to you.”

McCoy drops the phone as the air seems to disappear and all he can hear is a tinny voice saying _“Mr. McCoy? Mr. McCoy?”_ over and over again...

 

  

*

 

 

A version of him that has yet to meet Jim gets around, it would seem, and the news hits hard. He remembers _her_. It’s her lipstick in the cabinet, old and left behind and he’s not entirely sure why he hasn’t thrown it out but…he just hasn’t.

He met her when he was drunk in a bar, and despite the cliché, he used to spend so much of his time drunk in bars that it’s really no surprise. But she liked him despite that, and that counted for something. Lots of something’s.

It’s even harder when out of the blue he’s given full custody. Jocelyn, his first real love, killed in a car crash and all of a sudden McCoy’s reminded once more of his hatred of cars and planes and metal boxes with flawed human beings in charge of their vast powerful engines.

And now there’s a baby in his arms, and Jim reads out from the certificate they’ve been handed, that her name is Joanna and she’s thirteen months old.

Bones doesn’t know how the hell that works out with times and dates, but he’s the father and this is his responsibility and his hands won’t stop shaking.

Neither do Jim’s.

 

  

*

 

 

McCoy steals a guy’s wallet, having already stolen someone else’s clothes and he makes it to the EL just before it leaves the platform. He sits himself down and can’t hide his smile when he sees the face of woman in front of him as she puts down her broadsheet newspaper.

“Are you Annette McCoy?” He asks without skipping a beat.

“Yes,” she smiles, a little uncertain, but not unkind..

“I love you. I mean, your work, your singing—you have a great voice.”

“Well thank you. People don’t usually recognise me on the subway.”

“My name’s Leonard.”

“How funny, I have a son named Leonard. He wants to be a Doctor like his grandfather. Three years old and he’s already saying things like that.” She smiles, lost in her fond memory of her son’s statement with a too-big-toy-stethoscope around his neck.

“I met someone, and ever since I feel safe. And, and I have a daughter, and I don’t know what I’m doing but somehow I think it’ll be alright. I wish they could hear you sing.

“Maybe they will one day.”

He doesn’t smile at that, he can’t.

“I’m really glad I met you.” He tells her, preferring this memory of his mother alive and kind rather than afraid in the front seat of their car.

“I’m really glad I met you too.”

He stares out of the subway car and stands ready to depart.

“Make sure they know how you feel.” She tells him with a knowing smile, “It never hurts to say it out loud.”

“Your son loves you very much.”

“I know.”

 

  

*

 

 

He wakes up in one of the enclosure’s at the Lincoln Park Zoo, a host of school children laugh on the other side of the glass and McCoy has enough time to scramble out of there before anyone gets a good look of anything.

It’s when he’s leaving the staff changing room that he hears it. A very distinct cry of ‘Daddy’ that was certainly aimed in his direction. He turns and sees a young girl bounding towards him, and before he can think, she’s leading him outside and away from her school group.

By the time they make it to the zebras he’s found out that here, Joanna is ten years old and already she seems like the smartest kid he’s ever met, next to Jim that is. She’s seen her grandmother at the opera, and him and Uncle Jim fighting. She’s even seen her mother on a few occasions, and Bones tries to wrap his head around the fact that he’s passed on his genetic problem to his daughter.

“Uncle Jim says you an I are exactly alike, but Dr. Puri calls me a prodigy because sometimes I can choose where I go.”

Too soon, her teacher is calling for her, and when Joanna admits how much she’s missed her father, he dares to ask how long it’s been.

“How old were you when I died?”

“Five.”

“Five.” He repeats, his mouth dry.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you.”

“No, its okay, I haven’t travelled past my own life before. How’s...how’s Jim?”

“Okay…sad.”

Before they can discuss anything else, her teacher calls once more, and she has to leave.

“I love you daddy.”

“I love you too, kiddo.”

 

  

*

 

 

Jim is silently freaking out and Bones can tell from the man’s pace as he walks from one end of the room to the other trying to calm Joanna’s cries.

“You’re thinking too loud.” Bones says, taking Jo in his arms and cradling her carefully. Mindful of her head, he kisses Jim to silence any retort the man might have.

“Everything’s going to be okay.”

“It is?”

He doesn’t say they have five years left. He doesn’t say that Jim will have to do this alone soon. He just smiles, lies through his teeth and says, _yeah, yeah it is_.

 

  

*

 

 

Winona treats Joanna like her own grandchild, and sits happily playing with the little baby’s tiny hands as McCoy’s father plays the violin. Pike does a lot of smiling, and clasping Jim on the shoulder whenever they’re over for a birthday party, and he sees Jo getting bigger and bigger. She crawls, and then she staggers, and then she’s walking towards McCoy’s open arms.

When she’s three she’s precocious, and she finds an old stethoscope at her grandfather’s home. She uses it to keep her dolls happy and healthy while her Uncle Jim goes through roll after roll of film documenting her childhood. They have stacks of tapes with birthday parties and Christmases and holidays and snow days and thanksgiving. When she’s old enough to hold a violin in her small hands, her grandfather begins to teach her how to play it. He’s over three times a week and Bones relishes the chance to just watch them together.

Jim doesn’t see the way McCoy’s hands shake as he hangs up w birthday banner that says Joanna is five years old today. He’s more interested in looking out into the garden at Joanna playing with another girl. She’s wearing an oversized jumper that looks like one of his own.

She’s time travelling. Bones tells him at the window, watching carefully as the elder Jo puts her arm around her younger counterpart and whispers something, he can just about lip-read the words, _This year_.

“You wanna talk about it?” Jim asks when she comes back into the house alone. He mistakes her sadness for that same feeling her gets when Bones leaves him behind. But McCoy knows that’s not the problem, and deep down he thinks Jim does too.

He’ll find out eventually. He always does, and they'll deal with it like they always have, with fear and trepidation and unfailing support from one another.

 

  

*

 

 

He lands in the snow in the middle of nowhere and whenever he tries to wade through it he only finds himself sinking deeper. He’s shivering and he can’t breathe and his legs are screaming and then so is he.

And everything melts around him until Jim is by his side and Jo runs in with blankets and in the din of his pain he thinks he hears his daughter dial 911. He moans in pain and at the loss of her innocence because of him.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, shhh, it’ll be alright.” Jim repeats over and over, hoping it’s true.

 

  

*

 

 

He dreams of a world that isn’t, of a time he’ll never travel to, a man with a clipboard tells Jim he’s suspended. Though Bones never hears what he’s suspended from. They’re both dressed in red, and the damn uniform is chaffing.

He looks at his best friend, left behind again and last night’s words are echoing in his ears. He sneaks Jim aboard and wakes up when the explosions start. He thinks he might have been in space, and that it wasn’t as horrific as he’d usually suppose.

He looks around the hospital room. Folded bodies of family and friends are crammed onto seats in the corner of the room. By his side Jim is asleep, drooling ever so slightly on the white hospital sheets.

He looks up at the television hanging from the ceiling as a man runs across the screen dressed in a poorly made alien costume. He wonders where the remote is, and how long everyone sat watching the sci-fi channel before falling asleep. He wonders what time it is, and why everything’s kinda fuzzy. He forces himself to stay calm because he really doesn’t want to go anywhere just yet.

Jim stirs and that’s when he’s told, in a pained whisper—to make sure Jo doesn’t stir in her grandfather’s arms, and Spock and Nyota stay asleep curled up against the wall—that though his foot was saved, he’ll be wheelchair bound for quite a while.

Jim’s shining blue eyes are dull and sad, and the reality of that bleeding version of himself they saw in the hallway washes over him in waves. If he can’t walk, he can’t run, if he can’t run, he can’t...he can’t...

He spends the next few days sleeping, and pretending to be asleep even when he’s awake. The first few times Jim calls him on his bullshit, but stops when he realises it doesn’t make a difference. He holds his hand, and makes sure Jo’s okay, and stays by Bones’ bedside for as long as he’s needed.

 

  

*

 

 

“It’s like sneezing.” Bones told him once when he was in bed with the flu. “You can try to stop it, but it’s inevitable and you can’t control it. Sometimes you do it again and again and you can’t stop for so long...but then sometimes it just happens once and then you’re okay for a little while.”

His response had been to sneeze and bury his head into the pillows. Bones had smiled, reaching for his hand and holding it in his own. It’s their way of reminding each other they’re there. Brushing knuckles in the kitchen as Bones desperately attempts to teach Jim to cook, tracing life-lines on palms in boredum before sleep.

_Clutching tight to hands slick with blood as he dies in—_

Jim wakes with a start and nearly falls off of the stool by Bones’ bedside.

“I hate how much time we spend in hospitals, terrified.” Jim sighs and tells his “sleeping” lover. “I hate how much time we waste by being asleep. I just...I need you and you won’t even—”

“I’m sorry.” McCoy whispers, still asleep, yet somehow aware.

“’s not your fault.” Jim responds, squeezing Bones’s hand until they’re both a little more grounded.

 

  

*

 

 

Sometimes he pours himself a drink he won’t ever take a sip of, and sometimes Jim gets the wrong idea because he’s so strung out form stress of the unknown that he’s barely holding it together.

“You wanna drown your sorrows? Fine! Sit there and travel and get stuck somewhere and come back even worse off then you are now. Do it, I dare you, I dare you to destroy everything ahead of schedule.”

“There is no schedule!”

“Really? ‘cause it sure as hell feels that way. You die. We saw it, we were standing right here and we saw it. “

“How do you think I feel, Jim? Dammit, I die! I don’t get to watch Jo grow up, my own damned daughter and I won’t be there to walk her down the aisle. I won’t be there when she gets a car, or falls in love.”

“Won’t you? You’ve already seen her older, you might again.”

“Before I die in a pool of my own blood?”

They stop. Out of breath, exhausted. Bones regrets it because now he can’t get the image out of his head and there’s a pain in Jim’s eyes that won’t go away.

“I don’t want to drown my sorrows.”

“I know, and I know all you want to do is stay every time you go but it’s hard to be the one left behind.”

 

  

*

 

 

Joanna asks him to try to stay and McCoy wonders if she thinks he hasn’t already been trying. She tells him to sing, but it doesn’t work, and he’s in the garden and there are fireworks above him and he limps over to the window in time to hear someone scream _Jim_! and _hospital_ and he’s watching himself die in the hallway of his lovely home.

He disappears, leaving nothing but a handprint on the frosted windowpane.

“Bones? Are you okay?” Jim asks, helping McCoy back into his chair and grabbing a blanket from the sofa to cover him with.

“I may throw up on you.” Is his only response.

 

  

*

 

 

Over Christmas he helps teach Jim how to cook, without cremating the bird, and Joanna how to pick lock, feeling for the careful click that will save her life one day. She knows the entire medical encyclopaedia backwards (though that was of her own doing rather than his insistence) and she’s already surpassing everyone’s expectations with the violin.

New Years Eve comes far too quickly, and McCoy acts jumpy and unlike himself all evening.

“You have to tell them.” Uhura says gently, hand on his shoulder, standing behind him as they both watch their spouses laughing in the kitchen. Spock ensures that Jim doesn’t set fire to anything, while Bones’ father plays Joanna a piece of music on the violin, having already exhausted the in’s and out’s of his medical bag for her curious mind to play with.

“I’m going to.”

He’d told Nyota almost by accident. She’d caught him staring out at the snow, and the fireworks in the distance and had badgered him until he tiredly answered that tonight was the night he would die.

Her silence made him realise what he had done almost instantly, but it was too late to take it back, and as a result she had spent most of the night dabbing at the corners of her eyes whenever she thought nobody was looking.

He asks Spock to follow him outside

“I just wanted to say thanks for everything.” He starts, wringing his hands and trying to look his friend in the eye without flinching.

“What are you talking about?’

Straight to the point.

“Something might happen tonight, and, Spock...I know we haven’t always...gotten along, but, I really do think of you as—”

“I am, and always shall be, your friend, McCoy.”

Bones bows his head, and Spock shocks them both by initiating a hug between the two of them. This is it, they both know it.

“I can’t bare the thought of telling Jo in person, I’ve already told her so much and she’s so clever and beautiful and...oh god, and Jim.”

“Jim what?”

Jim has joined them outside and he’s worried and he’s holding about four blankets in his arms and complaining that neither of them should be outside in this weather, New Years or not, it’s damned freezing. Spock excuses himself and squeezes McCoy’s shoulder as though it will lessen the nerves coiled in and around his stomach.

“What’s going on?” Jim presses when they’re alone, draping the blanket over Bones and huddling in the freeze. McCoy doesn’t answer.

“No.” Jim says stubbornly. “No.”

“Jim...”

“Why did you let me invite all of these people?”

“I didn’t want you to be alone.”

And then the realisation that he soon will be is almost too much to bear.

“I wouldn’t change anything. I’ve been in love with you all my life.” It’s a quiet admission that Jim’s been over and over in his head for so long, and that kiss...that kiss on his eighteenth birthday that cemented it all... “I couldn’t even change it if I wanted to.”

But he doesn’t want to. He’d never change it, not for anything. This life he’s had, while not without it’s problems, is the life he chose. He could have walked away in the library and stayed away but this future was meant to be and it’s his for the keeping.

“Don’t go.” Jim breaks his own rules and begs Bones to stay, kissing his with fervour, feeling as though he’ll never get to do it again and he must, he must.

“Jim, you know if I could stop it I would.”

“Just think real hard, you’re the smartest man I know, aside from Spock. Just try, please for me, for Jo, just try.”

Their foreheads meet in a bowed gesture of fear and love and sadness.

“I’ve been trying ever since I met you. I can’t change this. I can’t.”

When it happens…when...when Bones is gone and Jim’s breath hitches because in seconds, or minutes or...maybe even hours, he’ll appear again in the foyer at the bottom of the stairs. They would plant Santa’s footsteps in fake snow there, walking from the chimney through to the living room where their tree stood tall.

Those memories were fresh in his mind and soon he would be forced to face another. Of Bones prone at his feet, gasping, bleeding, eyes locked and— _god, no_ , this can’t be happening it can’t be, there must be something they can—

A gasp. A cry. Screams, and he’s running.

“Jim!”

_“No!”_

 

  

*

 

 

He hears hunters in the woods and with a sickening lurch of his stomach he realises he’s behind the meadow where it all began, and that voice is Jim’s uncle, Chris Pike. The man had embraced Bones with smiles and pats on the back and now he has a shotgun in his hands and the movement between the branches is enough for him to pull the trigger.

The shot blinds Bones with pain, so much so that he doesn’t feel the snow beneath his back as his blood stains it red. Pretty soon he doesn’t even feel the hardwood floor beneath him either but he sees himself standing staring and he’s arrived too early and in a second he’s gone again and lying on the same floor—aged with time and sticky fingerprints left by little girls. In the distance he hears shouting and his vision is filled with Jim and Joanna and his father and he knows friends are close by and they’re all there and he doesn’t want to leave and, and, and....

It hurts to breathe, it hurts to keep his eyes open, it hurts to see the hint of betrayal in Jim’s gaze that Bones didn’t warn him before tonight, that he’d gotten an hours notice of the end of the world and here it was laid out in front of him, blood soaked fingers cradling his lover’s head as he stuttered his daughter’s name.

It hurts to breathe and the silence hangs around them like a veil, broken only by his harsh breathing and soon even that’s gone.

“No, no, no, no, no.”

Jim rocks back and forth, grabbing McCoy’s limp form in his arms and begging him to come back, to time travel, to breath, to do something. Joanna is held at bay by her grandfather and shielded from the painful sight by Spock and Uhura’s shocked sadness.

He feels a tiny spark of panic when the pain fades away, and everything slows down to a snail’s pace, and he finally has time to think.

Sometimes he hates that their life consists of bursts of moments interlaced with past, present and futures encounters of each other. But then he meets his daughter when Jocelyn has already ended their latest argument with an announcement of her intentions to not keep the child.

Sometimes he resents that his life is controlled by his condition, but then he buys the lottery ticket, and they live in their dream home and their lives slowly but surely become whole until Bones himself feels that Jim’s statement finally rings true. That they’ve known each other forever, destined to be together.

Sometimes, no, _most_ of the time he wishes he could make it stop. But then he thinks about everything it’s given him, and he thinks about this moment. This embrace and how much is means to the grieving man in front of him. This chance to say stop waiting, when he somehow knows he won’t get the chance to say it when he wants to. When his world is taken from him in a mess of red.

The world catches up to him then.

“I love you,” Jim whispers, Bones whispers too. They whisper again and again to one another in a mess of hurried feelings and emotions, rushed by time and fate and— _god there’s so much blood._ Someone calls an ambulance, there’s movement all around him but all Bones knows is Jim’s blue eyes staring down at him and his mouth moving but the sound’s out of synch. Always out of synch. And all Jim knows is that his world is falling down around him and he doesn’t know what to do.

“Come back. Come back, please come back.”

Spock clutches Nyota tighter at the words—broken and pleading—as though he’s afraid that death is contagious.

“Don’t leave, don’t leave me. Please, Bones, please.”

 

  

*

 

 

Every night Jim waits until bedtime to grieve. He pushes it away all day, gets on with his work, his reading, bringing up Joanna, tidying the house. And as soon as it’s dark, he crawls into bed and lies there with his clothes on. He breathes in the lingering smell on the pillow and closes his eyes, fingers digging deep into the bunched up quilt—a poor substitute for a husband.

And every night Joanna hugs her Uncle Jim and hopes to make him feel better.

“What can I do?” She asks her father one day, as she steps off of the school bus and into his waiting arms. “How do I fix Uncle Jim?”

“Just being there’s enough Jo, sweetie, trust me, that’s all you can do.”

 

  

*

 

 

Joanna wields the baseball bat with grace and efficiency, and sends the ball flying through the air. She drops it when she sees her father emerge from the bushes, and runs forward screaming ‘Daddy!’

McCoy knows from her eyes that it’s a year he’ll never grow into. A time he won’t know chronologically.

“Go to the house!” She yells with authority to the younger children playing with her. “Go get Uncle Jim, hurry!”

Spock and Uhura’s children race back to the house and Joanna finds solace in her father’s warm hug.

“How old are you?”

“Nine years old.”

“You’re nine? And Jim still leaves clothes?”

“He says _you never know_.”

“I’m leaving.” He tells the beautiful young girl standing before him. It’s not a statement of want or need; it’s the resented truth of the matter, the feeling inside of him. Damn it, he knows and he can’t do a thing to stop it. All he can do is wait and stand it and his stomach’s churning because in the distance there he is.

“No daddy, _sing._ ” Joanna implores.

“I can’t sing.” McCoy reminds her. So he runs instead.

In the distance he sees a figure. A gold shirt over a black undershirt. Black jeans and black boots and _run run run faster faster faster._

 _“Jim,_ ” he breathes, before he too begins to run, before he starts to bridge the space between them both.

For Bones it’s a gap he can’t begin to understand. Because he’s not the one left waiting, he’s always the one that leaves.

His lover is at home, the man he adores is back in his time, grumbling at how something so small can scream so loudly, and cry and...well, you know.

This Jim is older, and Bones is sure he’s never seen him run with so much determination. He’s practically leaping towards him, and anyone else would have fallen by now or slowed their gait but not Jim, never Jim.

They crash together. Buried heads in necks and shoulders and the intake of breath from the both of them at the intimacy and the closeness. Bones knows Jim needs him and damn it he will be there for him, he has to be, for the both of them.

“I...”

Words fail them both, tears falling as the transience of the moment hits home.

“I can’t stay.”

“I know.”

For Bones his world is complete, they have fought and they have been hurt and his every second is haunted with the possibility that he might travel right then and there and then what?

But he feels safe and he feels secure and this Jim running towards him has lost that, McCoy knows.

Their embrace is tinged with the tragic understanding that Jim is grounded in the future, in a world without his Bones. McCoy can feel it in the tight hold Jim has on him, short fingernails digging through the jumper and shirt always left for him in the trees behind the meadow. Their meadow. He can feel it in the staccato of Jim’s breath on his neck, hitched and out of control, so unlike his stoic partner. This Jim has lost so much, but this Bones can still go back to the security, even if it is marred with the knowledge that it is not as everlasting as he would have liked to think when the two of them were younger.

“Why didn’t you tell me the date? I could have waited.” He hates the seconds they missed together when they’ve already lost so much time.

“Listen to me, Jim. I don’t want you to spend your life waiting.”

“But...”

“No, no _but’s_ , stop. Stop leaving clothes, stop hoping. Live your life, I never wanted it to be like this, I didn’t want you to be kept _waiting._ ”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, so, so much.”

The moment McCoy’s lips touch Jim’s own, the time traveller begins to vanish until there’s nothing left but a heap of clothes on the grass below, slowly growing damp on the damp ground. Jim falls to his knees and busies himself in folding the discarded garments. The heap of all that was left as once more his best friend, his love, his husband had disappeared.

The shirt and jumper and jeans used to be among the clothes his mother would cling to in grief of his father’s passing and now they’re a symbol of his childhood and his life of picking up the pieces Bones left behind.

The clothes smell of the past, like suddenly someone’s bathed them in the right amount of shampoo and cologne and aftershave and toothpaste and musk….

For a moment Jim feels it all rushing back to him, the loss, the grief, the anger at being left behind. For a moment, he wants to curl up onto the ground and scream. Another part of him wants to hit something hard.

And then he sees Joanna, and she’s still smiling in the wake of her father’s unexpected visit. She’ll see him again, Jim knows that much at least. In a few years she’ll be playing with her younger self and she’ll let slip that Daddy’s going to...

_Stop it._

The moment passes. The anger dissipates as Joanna holds out her hand. He doesn’t put the clothes back in the woods. He doesn’t scream, or yell, or punch anything. And he certainly doesn’t feel the urge to fly up into the clouds or run away.

“C’mon kiddo,” he says with affection, pulling Jo up into his arms and walking back through the meadow to the main house. “Shouldn’t keep Spock and Uhura waiting.”

 

  

*

 

 

Jim will see Bones once more in his lifetime. His hair will be grey, and he’ll be worn down with the kind of tiredness that doesn’t go away with any amount of sleep. His friends have passed, and Joanna’s happily married, successful, vibrant.

He can’t feel that in himself any more. He doesn’t have the energy to really care. And then Bones will appear in the doorway, and Jim will smile, having half expected something similar to occur, despite any promises he may have tried to keep about not spending his life waiting.

There, held tight, they find each other again, out of synch, but together.

They will not speak, but they will hold one another tightly, and just as Bones will die in Jim’s arms in his own future that has yet to come; Jim too will pass in the arms of his late lover. When the fire in the living room dies, Bones will vanish and in the present time, when he comes back to bed, Jim will glide his fingers through McCoy’s hair.

“Where did you go?” He’ll ask, half asleep, deciding not to mention the tear tracks on Bones’ face out of courtesy.

“It doesn’t matter,” Bones will reply, smiling at the youth and life in Jim’s face. “Today’s what’s important, everything else can wait.”

“Mmm,” Jim mumbles, happily, sidling closer to McCoy. “I couldn’t agree more.”

 

_**-Fin.** _  



End file.
